IdeaEconomy.Net » social media

Brilliant Marketing or Deceptive Advertising?

John — Tue, 01 Nov 2011 21:44:11 +0000

Big Ideas

Subtle and creative advertising can be much more effective than in your face interruptions.
Hi-Tec demonstrates water-proof shoes that help you walk on water.

The Newest Sports Craze – Liquid Mountaineering – Walking on Water

Take a moment and watch this video. (Thanks to Alan Perlman of Nerve Rush for sharing this.)

This video is now approaching 11 million views. It is obviously very professionally done and quite interesting to watch, but is it real? Is it effective marketing?

Clearly the video is designed to market water-proof Hi-Tec shoes. What better way to emphasize water-proof qualities than to show that the shoes help you walk on water?

10.7 million YouTube views if proof enough for me of the efficacy of the video. Well done Hi-Tec!

Action Items

Exaggerate your products features to find innovative marketing ideas or positioning.
Think entertainment, not advertisement when promoting your company.
If a shoe video can get 11 million views, what can your company accomplish?

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Occupy Wall Street – Grows to a World Wide Protest

John — Wed, 05 Oct 2011 05:46:43 +0000

Big Ideas

Tens of thousands are now involved with the Occupy Wall Street Protests worldwide
Web based platforms facilitate the coordination of mass gatherings and protests around the world
With online collaboration tools, a single leader or clear plan are not required.

You have undoubtedly heard about the Occupy Wall Street protests that have been growing around the world. The short news snippets don’t really capture the magnitude of the movement. Protests are being scheduled in dozens of cities around the world and recently the Almalgamated Transit Union, with 190,000 members has given its support. This is a world wide phenomenon and it is growing quickly.

How Occupy Wall Street Started

The birth of the movement was a post on the Adbusters website on July 13th. Here is a small quote from that first call to action,

On September 17, we want to see 20,000 people flood into lower Manhattan, set up tents, kitchens, peaceful barricades and occupy Wall Street for a few months. Once there, we shall incessantly repeat one simple demand in a plurality of voices.

The home page of OccupyWallSt.org describes the movement as,

Occupy Wall Street is leaderless resistance movement with people of many colors, genders and political persuasions. The one thing we all have in common is that We Are The 99% that will no longer tolerate the greed and corruption of the 1%. We are using the revolutionary Arab Spring tactic to achieve our ends and encourage the use of nonviolence to maximize the safety of all participants.

Occupy Wall Street to Occupy the World

Another website, OccupyTogether, has since been created to coordinate some of the scheduled protests and other activities in dozens of cities around the world.

On Oct. 4th, the date of this post, there were more than 39,000 followers for the @OccupyWallSt Twitter account, with many thousands more for city focused protests around the world. (@OccupyChicago – 7000, @OccupyLA – 5000, @Occupy_Boston – 3500, @OccupyToronto – 1600, @OccupyTokyo – 400, with many more for every major city on the planet.)

Lessons in Collaboration

We have learned from the middle east uprisings this spring that leaderless movements have the power to topple governments and really change the world. Occupy Wall Street is no different. There is no central organization or leader directing the movement, participants are connecting and coordinating with widely available web based platforms . There are groups like MoveOn.org, that are trying to co-opt the protests, but for the most part, it is a largely ego-less and egalitarian process. Even the demands of OccupyWallStreet.org have been community driven.

The Future of Collaboration

Whether you support the protests or not, there are many principles here to learn from. With the internet, and social media in particular, ordinary citizens can coordinate and mobilize on a large scale. Time, money and central leadership are no longer necessary for massive collaboration.

Consider some of these implications.

Motivating and involving a dispersed volunteer effort is starkly different than an employer – employee relationship. Try motivating people to take action without paying them.
A vision to do good in the world is far more powerful than any monetary reward. Is your company making the world a better place?
Large groups of people can be mobilized without central control or authority. What could your employees accomplish if given the freedom?
Democratic and egalitarian processes can formulate a unified vision. Direction doesn’t have to come from the boss. Give your employees the information and freedom to direct their own future.
Self-interests and ego gratification only serve to derail the process. Let the cause or vision be the focus, not a rock star executive.

Action Items

For your next project, try an egalitarian process where there is no leader and decisions must be made democratically.
Find a meaningful unifying vision for the project, and get out of the way.
Put trust in the process. You will not always get your way, but continued involvement by motivated participants is far more valuable than being in control.
If your company is not making the world a better place, than maybe it is time to adjust your priorities.

Links
OccupyWallSt.org
OccupyTogether.org
General Assembly for Occupy Wall Street
Reddit - Occupy Wall Street

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Social Media and the Changing Face of Politics – Lessons from the Alberta PC Leadership Race

John — Thu, 18 Aug 2011 00:27:04 +0000

Big Ideas:

Social Media is transforming business, government and society in general.
Success requires embracing the principles of Authenticity, Transparency and Collaboration.
The Alberta PC Party Leadership Race offers a great case study in the future of politics.

Social media and technology in general, are having profound effects on all aspects of our lives. From toppling dictatorships in the Middle East, to getting an under dog in the white house, to outing rioting hoodlums in London and Vancouver, the world is much different than it was just a decade ago.

The Social Media Big Three

The way we work and live is undergoing nothing short of a revolution. Three themes that I tend to keep coming back to are authenticity, transparency and collaboration (or engagement).

Authenticity

Authenticity is somewhat of a loaded and overused term now, but it remains an integral part of this social media age. We can’t trust our food to have real ingredients, companies to represent our best interests, nor politicians to deliver on their promises. Everything around us seems to be a marketing pitch, so when we find someone or something that appears to be real, we embrace it.

Consider this video series of Alberta PC Leadership Candidate, Doug Griffiths. It is very refreshing to find a politician that is not afraid to be himself and honestly communicate in the open without media handlers getting in the way.

Transparency

In a world where everyone carries a camera with internet connectivity, it is very hard to hide anything for long. Police and governments are using social media to identify and locate criminals, just as the world is holding dictators responsible for the carnage they are wrecking on their own citizens. Corporations and politicians can no longer hide behind closed doors either.

Two of the Alberta PC Leadership Candidates had a short Twitter debate, highlighted on Stuart Thomson’s Tumblr blog. In the dialogue, candidate @Rick_Orman misrepresents @GriffMLA’s stand on a provincial sales tax and is soon called on it. Thomson offers a great commentary on the discussion, including “See if you can spot the younger candidate.”

With Doug Griffiths as the youngest candidate at 38 years old, it does appear that youth is a substantial advantage in understanding how to use the new new tools to connect and engage.

Collaboration (Engagement)

With social media, the one-to-many broadcast model of traditional communications has given way to a more egalitarian system where everyone has a voice and can publish their own articles, videos or anything else they wish. This change in power structure is hard for many to cope with. The ‘do as I say’ mentality of older and larger organizations, is not acceptable for younger generations brought up in with a culture of inclusion.

Even with smaller startups, non-profits and community groups, egos and turf protection still get in the way of the ultimate purpose of the business or organization. There always seems to be someone who thinks they are correct and refuses to listen to alternative view points. Skilled knowledge workers and citizens are no longer tolerating this lack of involvement and demand to be heard.

I have noticed substantial resistance to basic collaboration tools like shared Google Docs. General principles like respect for the ideas of others or inviting divergent view points are commonly overlooked by the stronger members of the group. Often, these people don’t even notice how they are trampling on the good intentions of others.

Politics, is no different. Inexpensive technology, ubiquitous internet access and robust social media platforms offer unprecedented opportunities to connect with constituents. Of course, there will be those who don’t get it, like Newt Gingrich and his purchased Twitter Followers. However, there is no doubting how integral social media was to Barack Obama’s Presidential Campaign. As FastCompany magazine reported;

What Obama did so successfully is that he went to where his customer base was. He could no longer afford to meet with everyone at their kitchen tables, but he could friend them on Facebook or follow them on Twitter.

Alberta PC Leadership Race

Getting back to the Alberta PC Leadership Campaign, here is a chart of all the candidates and their Twitter statistics. I will let you draw your own conclusions from this, but the real test is contacting the candidates via Twitter to see who responds and what they say. You can’t fake real engagement. It takes work.

Candidate	Twitter Link	Tweets	Following	Followers	Listed
Doug Griffiths	@GriffMLA	2,972	3,042	3,104	174
Alison Redford	@Alison4Premier	402	638	1,630	61
Gary Mar	@GaryMarPC	260	359	1,287	47
Doug Horner	@HornerForAB	228	84	930	44
Ted Morton	@Morton4Premier	123	151	784	29
Rick Orman	@Rick_Orman	244	282	636	27

(Full Disclosure: I am volunteering on Doug Griffiths campaign for the Alberta PC Party Leadership because he embraces the principles of Authenticity, Transparency and Collaboration more than anyone I have ever seen. In fact, he has a 100% volunteer campaign solely on his ability to inspire supporters.)

Action Items:

Are you and your company pretending to be something you are not? How about embracing the core of what you really stand for and letting the whole world know about it?
Do you have secrets you don’t want the public to know? If you have to hide your actions, perhaps it is time to stop doing bad things?
Do your employees have all the information they need to know to help you grow your company? Why not open up the books and let everyone contribute?
Make time every week to really listen to customers, employees and partners and try to understand their ideas and view points. Even if you feel they are wrong, there is much to be gained from giving employees an opportunity to fail.
Are you connecting with customers and potential customers through social media? Effective social media takes time, but the rewards can be worth it.

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Inbound Marketing is the Future

John — Wed, 22 Jun 2011 06:14:22 +0000

Big Ideas:

Traditional advertising is becoming less effective.
Content marketing is the most cost effective way to generate leads and build trust.

Advertising is Dead

“Marketing in the future is like sex. Only the losers will have to pay for it.” Jon Bond via FastCompany

With print, TV and radio all suffering from declining viewership, traditional advertising is losing it’s effectiveness. Internet based content and applications are decimating print, radio and television based media sources so it only makes sense that marketing dollars are shifting to the web.

Of course, there is still advertising on the internet but it has a drastically different dynamic. Online ads can be highly targeted and everything is completely measurable. The old shotgun approach to advertising is dying fast.

Outbound versus Inbound Marketing

Traditional advertising or outbound marketing is about broadcasting messages out to a mass audience. It includes TV and radio commercials, newspaper and magazine ads, direct mail, telephone soliciting, spam, event sponsorship, etc.

In contrast, inbound marketing, is about attracting people already searching for your products and services. Instead of paying to market to a general audience, most of whom are not interested in your message anyway, inbound marketers create valuable content their target market is searching for.

Bloggers and internet focused businesses intimately understand the value of inbound marketing. Visitors to your website and social media outposts are the lifeblood of every forward thinking company. The most effective way to attract eyeballs is online content.

Most offline companies still haven’t made this realization. They are still blasting out newspaper ads, radio commercials to a mass audience trying their best to ignore the message. As consumers we are sick of being interrupted with advertising that doesn’t interest us.

Blogging for Business

The most cost-effective way to generate leads is to create valuable content that educates your potential clients. Write informative blog posts, case studies and ebooks that focus on substance over sales pitches.

If you want to sell custom WordPress set ups, teach your visitors how to use WordPress, search engine optimization and copywriting.
If you are a marketing agency, teach how to use CRM applications, crowdsourcing, social media and other key elements of the sales and marketing process.
If you are a real estate agency, focus on your neighborhood and write about everything happening in that area. Try to become an online hub, connecting everyone in the community.
If you are a restaurant, offer video cooking classes and share recipes.

People buy from people they know, like and trust. The best way to get noticed and established those bonds with customers is to create value, not spam them with cheesy sales pitches.

Action Items:

Start blogging helpful articles that are directly related to your potential customers’ needs.
Share valuable content from other sites on social media.
Write helpful ebooks, white papers or case studies that you give for free in exchange for email addresses.
Get comfortable with video, because it is the most effective way to teach complex tasks like how to use software or play a musical instrument.

More Links
Hubspot.com – the company that coined the term ‘inbound marketing.’
Content Marketing on Copyblogger.com.

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Hate Conferences? How about an Anti-Conference?

John — Thu, 09 Jun 2011 02:04:19 +0000

Big Ideas:

Social media connections are weak; real world meet ups are still essential.
Smaller conferences focused around an activity build stronger connections.

The Rise of Anti-Conferences

It is more important than ever to make real world connections than ever, but conferences? Spending a few days with thousands of people frantically handing out business cards is a difficult way to establish meaningful connections.

TheNextWeb reported on the rising trend of anti-conferences:

I can go and swap my business card with 500 people at a conference, but at a smaller event I can make 100 solid relationships with people that last a lifetime.

Unconferences have been around for a while providing an unconventional and creative setting for people to meet and network, but I’m witnessing a trend for the conference aspect of an event, (thousands of participants watching a speaker, bad coffee, organized networking) being thrown out of the window and more activity conscious events being organized. Friends who went on Summit Series, an event for entrepreneurs on a charted cruise ship that sailed round the Bahamas, were raving about their yoga/music and shark tagging expeditions as well as the relationships they made onboard.

Social media has made it easier than ever to connect with thousands of people around the world, but most of those connections are tenuous at best. Real and lasting relationships come from intimate real world gatherings where the focus is on something other than generating immediate leads.

Having attendees participate in activities like rock climbing, hiking, yoga, wine-tasting or cooking classes is a great ice breaker that immediately creates shared experiences.

Action Items:

Organize a sporting or cultural activity for clients, suppliers and/or acquaintances that focus on people, not business.
Make a consistent effort to meet other professionals without a hard sell. Focus on them, not you.
Set aside 30 minutes a day to support and connect others online. Again, NO sales pitches.

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Social Capital is More Valuable than Money

John — Tue, 03 May 2011 20:08:02 +0000

Big Ideas:

Social capital is the most valuable asset.
Startup incubators prove that very little money is needed to build hugely valuable companies.
8 effective ways to build social capital.

What is Social Capital?

Social capital is the idea that our networks and connections have value. We understand this idea in expressions like “It’s not what you know, it’s who you know.” However, it has only been in recent years that people are are really starting to understand and exploit their own social capital.

Let’s start off with a few questions. (I would love to see your answers in the comments.)

As an entrepreneur, what would you rather have; $100,000 in cash or strong connections with potential customers interested in buying your services? It would be pretty easy to burn through that much money without cost-effective ways of generating leads and an efficient conversion process.

Taking that first question further, would your rather have $100,000 now or solid introductions to venture capitalists and angel investors that could potentially provide millions of dollars in financing and provide the expertise to skyrocket your business?

How much money is a successful social media network of thousands of friends, followers and blog readers worth? Imagine if you had to use traditional advertising to convince that market to trust you.

With low start up costs for most technology or service businesses, access to money is nice but certainly not a barrier to success (I have a related post on this called, Is Venture Capital Dead?. Our social networks, however are invaluable in gaining valuable attention in a world awash in information.

Startup Incubators

I often point to the amazing success of start up incubators like Ycombinator and Techstars to demonstrate the power of social capital. With just $20,000 to $30,000 of investment and a few months in the programs, businesses with million dollar valuations have been repeatedly created. Two popular successes have been AirBnB and Dropbox.

Access to mentors, investor networks and just the camaraderie and support of fellow entrepreneurs is a major accelerator to business success. A good idea and motivated team, supported with the social capital of the incubator are all that is needed.

Economics of Abundance

Unlike financial, resource or physical capital, social capital is not a scarce resource. This is a big idea. The way to get more social capital is through generosity. The more value you create for others, the more social capital, you create for yourself. You don’t need money, education or family connections to accumulate social capital, all that is needed is time and kindness.

How you build Social Capital

Create insanely great content and give it away for free.
Get involved in meetups and real world events.
Be a connector and introduce people who need to meet.
Share the valuable content of others with your network.
Be there for your peers with an ear or a helping hand.
Celebrate your supporters and fans with recognition and genuine appreciation.
Connect with others without asking for anything.
In summary: give, share, help, connect.

More Resources
Social Capital on Wikipedia
Academic Definitions of Social Capital from a variety of researchers.

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Your Business Needs a Growth Hacker

John — Fri, 15 Apr 2011 13:39:39 +0000

Big Ideas:

Start ups need a different type of marketing expertise than more established companies.
Growth hackers can focus on scalable and repeatable ways to grow your business.

Sean Ellis of Startup-Marketing.com coined a fantastic term, Growth Hacker.

Once startups are ready to scale, their biggest challenge is often hiring someone capable of leading the growth charge. A marketer with the right talents and approach can kick some serious ass once product-market fit and an efficient conversion/monetization process have been proven.

After product-market fit and an efficient conversion process, the next critical step is finding scalable, repeatable and sustainable ways to grow the business. If you can’t do this, nothing else really matters.

The Problem with Most Businesses

I have seen many marketing and social media consultants put so much emphasis on high level strategy, positioning, branding, logo design, etc. that the basic and easy opportunities to generate leads and customers remain neglected.

Who cares about your beautiful $20,000 brochureware website, if there is no content there to attract organic traffic or entice visitors to want to learn more about your offering?
Your professionally planned social media implementation doesn’t matter if your customers are online neophytes. Getting thousands of followers that will never be interested in your business is even worse.
Instead of looking at more effective ways of advertising, perhaps you should deliver a product or service worth buying.

A talented growth hacker can help you find the low hanging fruit to maximize your marketing budget.

Action Items:

A compelling business model comes first. You better have a good scalable way to create value for customers and get paid for it.
Make your business stand out from competitors. What value propositions do you offer? Make sure this is clearly communicated without the generic marketing fluff like “Customer service is our highest priority.”
Deliver on your value propositions. Service and quality in English speaking countries is so lousy now. The cheapest marketing is to actually care about customers.
Craft a unique story. If you want to be remembered, do something memorable. Check out my post on how a real estate agent uses bacon to stand out.
Research the keywords your customers are searching for and then optimize your website for those phrases.
Create online content your customers want to read, watch, listen to and share.
Develop effective lead nurturing campaigns to convert casual browsers into interested customers.
Have clear calls-to-action on all your marketing materials.
Engage people online and offline as humans with real conversations, not marketing pitches.
Consistently deliver more than you promise.

Am I missing anything? Let me know in the comments.

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Creative Marketing and Social Media Strategy from Jerry Aulenbach

John — Wed, 06 Apr 2011 23:18:04 +0000

Big Ideas:

Real estate agent, Jerry Aulenbach (@ZoomJer) creatively markets himself with … bacon.
Twitter now accounts for 39% of his business.

Edmonton based real estate agent, Jerry Aulenbach has brilliantly marketed himself to stand out in the competitive housing industry. What is his secret? Bacon.

I was seriously impressed the first time I saw Jerry’s bacon business cards that are actually smoked with real meat so they have an authentic smell like all bacon business cards should. The cards are a fantastic conversation starter but I later learned that Jerry has a whole selection of bacon products and bacon has become his identity. This creative marketing, along with an active social media presence seem to be working. Jerry was kind enough to answer some questions about his marketing efforts.

How did you get started with the bacon focus?

It all started with an idea to do something different for breakfast: the bacon weave, a 4×5 strip masterpiece that I posted to twitter in 2 photos. One was of the raw bacon cooking; the other was a finished, plated weave. Needless to say, they did more than make people drool. I quickly became the outlet for everyone’s interest in and love for bacon. “Hey, have you seen [insert random bacon product here]?” Every day, I get multiple mentions of this nature. I favourite most of them, so you can see them here: @ZoomJer/Favorites

You have an iPad, shoes, tie and business cards with bacon images, is there anything else?

I have several different bacon-themed t-shirts (Bacon makes everything better; push button, receive bacon; bacon bits video game, nature’s greatest miracle). I have bacon socks, a bacon wallet (not the one available online, but a vinyl one I got at the 104 Street Farmer’s Market, a bacon air freshener hanging from my rear-view mirror, the costume, bacon dental floss, maple bacon lollipops, bacon bandaids, bacon tooth picks, baconnaise. Most of these things have been given to me (which is awesome). I’m always on the hunt for more! http://myba.co/nTreats

I love the custom book your wife created, can you please explain what that is.

Well, she actually stole the idea from me! I was making a book with dozens of my friends from Royal LePage dedicated to the former Executive Director of the Royal LePage Shelter Foundation. I stole her nameplate from her office and we shipped it all across the country-to every province-and I presented it to her in Toronto. It blew her mind. However, just a few weeks before I was to do this, my wife hands me a gift at my birthday party. With everyone watching, I opened it to discover that she had done the same thing for me, but she mailed out my business cards to people across the country and in about 4 other countries. I was entirely stunned. In the book were several people who were also at my party. It was surreal. Not only that, but many of the people involved in the nameplate project were in this book, and several of the images were exact replicas of the ones they sent me, except instead of a name plate, they were holding my bacon business cards, of a bacon plush. I love that book and still take it with me wherever I go. (P.S. -both books were made in iPhoto).

You had an article written about you in the Edmonton Journal, how did that come about?

For my birthday last year, I decided I was going to wear my bacon outfit to Wendy’s and order a baconator. It was of course a tweetup, and about a dozen friends came along for kicks and giggles. On my way over, I was contacted by a reluctant writer for the Edmonton Journal, who informed me of a LifeStyles two-page spread on bacon. I burst into laughter (which probably didn’t help her feel much better), told her about the tweetup and said to send down a photographer. This she did. One of my friends ordered me a special baconator. One with no patties and 20 extra orders of bacon. It was probably a 2 lb sandwich of purely bacon. I’m pretty sure it inspired EpicMealTime. No, I did not eat it. I actually took it home and froze the bacon! Photos of that sandwich have been circulated in the National Post, Montreal Gazette, Calgary Herald, etc, under health articles that usually speak unfavourably about bacon. I get no respect.

Has your unique marketing gotten you more business?

It sure has.

You can’t just make a lot of noise on Twitter if you run a business that requires face-to-face interaction. I’ve never much liked the general public perception of realtors. It can make things like handing someone a card feel awkward, because you can easily come off as just another useless pushy salesman. When I (somewhat timidly) had my first batch of bacon-shaped business cards made up, I soon became aware that there was a way around that awkwardness. Instead of just giving them a “call me when you need to buy or sell” card, I was giving them a piece of creativity, art even. I was giving them an automatic conversation, which would quickly turn to me. “Why bacon?” “What does that have to do with real estate?” etc. I was also branding myself at the same time, and I knew it was working because people would tell me that they couldn’t look at bacon without thinking of me. My bacon card has evolved since. I’ve used increasingly better photos of bacon (instead of stock images, I now shoot my own), they are getting larger (the last one was about 4.5″), and I now have them smoked at the same place where I buy the actual bacon. Now I get a double effect. The shape of them plus the spot UV coating to make them look greasy is usually enough to blow people away (“these are the best business cards I have ever seen” is a regular comment), but when I tell them to smell it, I get the added bonus that most people were hoping it offered anyway!

I’ve also used the bacon costume to make a scene on more than one occasion. The biggest impact it has had was at a national sales rally for my company in Montreal. I wore it on the dance floor for a few hours. Needless to say, the image stuck. Combined with the cards, a lot of people know who I am now, and it’s leading to more referrals from other areas.

You are very active on Twitter, how do you use it?

I’d like to think that if I wasn’t in business, I’d still use Twitter in the same way. Most of what I do is simple socializing. I reply to virtually every mention, I follow back most everyone with a human-run account (but I refuse to use automated follow services-totally against what I do). I also run a daily search for people saying that they are moving along with some reference to Edmonton. I have to filter most of them out, but in a lot of cases, I’m the first one to know when someone is moving to the city, and I can give them a friendly greeting without being spammy. Some people respond well, some don’t respond at all. I automate that search through twilert.com, and I also run a search for “aulenbach OR aulenback”, as it is a rare name, and it’s interesting to see what comes up. Other than that, I basically let the business come naturally as it would through the people you meet from daily interaction. If they know what you do, need your services, and like you, chances are good they will call you when the time comes. Seems to work for me so far. (Jerry has a great blog post on how to use Twitter.)

How much time do you spend on social media everyday?

The time question is difficult to answer. It would probably amount to a few/several hours each day that I spend interacting with others online with twitter and facebook, but it is so spread out that it isn’t like doing just that straight for that long. It fills a lot of gaps between appointments, standing in line, down time, etc. I also enjoy it so much that it doesn’t seem like work.

What can we expect from you in the future?

Bigger and better parties. I love planning and promoting events (birthday parties, fund raisers, small tweetups), and I believe that you should never eat alone where possible. I raise money for the Royal LePage Shelter Foundation, and I am always trying to find ways to raise more money for their efforts to protect at-risk women and children. Philanthropy is a very significant part of what I do with my tweet cred. I’ve been asked to be on panels and to present at various events, and I quite like that. I usually have a chance to show social media skeptics how I use it and what it can do for them in a practical way. They always want to know “what’s in it for me?,” when a better question is “what do I bring to the table?” My motto for Twitter is “put out,” and I always do my best to be original, informative, entertaining, and sincere.

Links from Jerry’s Website

Follow Jerry on Twitter.

Just for fun. (Some of the items from the Bacon Store)

How I became bacon.

Twitter tips for n00bs.

A more comprehensive article on social media.

Action Items:

Can you come up with a fun and interesting way to differentiate yourself?
Jerry is “the Bacon Guy,” What kind of Guy or Gal are you?
Can you use Twitter to more effectively engage with potential customers?

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Is Social Media Making us Less Human?

John — Mon, 24 Jan 2011 20:02:44 +0000

Big Ideas: Social media is isolating us from real human interactions.
Have you thought about or measured the return on your social media efforts?

The Guardian writes about author and MIT professor, Sherry Turkle’s new book, Alone Together. Turkle offers yet another criticism of our over-use and over-reliance on technology.

The way in which people frantically communicate online via Twitter, Facebook and instant messaging can be seen as a form of modern madness.

Turkle’s thesis is simple: technology is threatening to dominate our lives and make us less human. Under the illusion of allowing us to communicate better, it is actually isolating us from real human interactions in a cyber-reality that is a poor imitation of the real world.

“We have invented inspiring and enhancing technologies, yet we have allowed them to diminish us.”

Social Media: The Good.

I have personally found social media to be a fantastic way to connect with people in meaningful ways. Many relationships that have started online have been extended to real world meet ups. There simply is no better way to connect with people and build relationships on an international scale.

Those relationships can be valuable only in the friendships they establish, or they can help with professional or commercial motives. Social media has changed the way we work and live. I am confident that this is only the beginning.

Social Media: The Bad

It also goes without saying that solely virtual interactions are not healthy. It is important to see social media as a way of connecting with others outside of our normal sphere of influence. Those relationships can be brief and superficial like responding to a customer service issue or they can develop into in-person meetings and real friendships. Social media is not a replacement for human interaction. It should be a way to engage more effectively with people we wouldn’t normally have a chance to connect with.

Social Media: The Ugly

The real downside of social media is when people allow it to interfere with real world connections. How many times have you eaten a meal with or talked to someone who is constantly checking their smart phone and responding to tweets, emails or Facebook updates?

Another major problem is the amount of time technology can consume. It is very easy to spend hours and hours per day writing about every thing you do and responding to as many others as you can.

In addition, how many hours do we waste learning to be more productive with our technology? Isn’t that defeating the purpose?

Look at the Twitter streams of some of your super user peers and you will see a steady flow of banal and meaningless communication. It is nice to connect with others but I don’t think we want to hear every thought and action of the people we follow.

This constant connection interferes with work and just creates noise among some of the more valuable information. How much time do you spend on non-work related social media on company time? The actual time might only be 20 or 30 minutes a day, but it also means that you are constantly distracted from what you are doing and have to spend time catching up where you left off before.

Conclusion

Technology and social media in particular, are allowing us to connect in unprecedented ways. We can collaborate on universal projects like Wikipedia or Linux, we can raise money for creative projects on sites like Kickstarter, we can make micro-loans to disadvantaged people on sites like Kiva. There is no question that technology is changing the world for the better. However even good things can be overdone. If you are spending more than an hour per day on social media, and that is not what you are paid to do, than you are probably spending too much time on it. How much better would your life be if you spent an extra hour a day with family or friends?

If you are a business, what is your return on your social media efforts? For most companies, there are much easier and higher return activities that they could be focusing their efforts on. Instead of spending lots of time responding to customer complaints, many companies would be better off investing in improving the quality of service. Instead of trying to create superficial conversations with others online, wouldn’t it make sense to maximize the value of the existing leads coming to your firm?

What do you think? Is social media making us less human?

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Do Businesses Understand Collaboration?

John — Fri, 07 Jan 2011 20:09:16 +0000

Big Ideas: Many companies still don’t understand the benefits of online collaboration.
Collaboration is not just about productivity, major creativity and innovation gains can also be found.

Despite the wide spread use of social media and collaboration tools like Google Docs, I still see many people working with email processes. Email works, but for most work, online collaboration is much more effective. Here is a very simple comparison of two ways to work together on the creation of a single document.

The Old Way of Collaborating

In the past, when multiple people were working on a single document like a marketing proposal, website copy or business plan, the only option was to email edits, comments and suggestions back and forth. The problem, of course, is that each person saves a different copy and several different versions start getting passed around.

For example, a manager asks an employee for a blog article. The manager will give a brief overview of the article with some guidelines and then emails an employee to write it. The employee writes the article and then emails it back to the manager. The manager opens the email, reads the article and makes some comments and edits. This new version is then emailed back or printed out for a face to face discussion of changes. This can often go back an forth several times, with a new version saved each time.

Imagine what it would be like if 10 or 20 or 100 people were working together on a project. You would almost need a full time team to coordinate every individual’s contribution. The more people involved, the more essential it is to collaborate.

This is exactly the problem that was encountered by the free online encyclopedia then called Nupedia. “Despite its mailing-list of interested editors, and the presence of a full-time editor-in-chief, the writing of content was extremely slow with only 12 articles written during the first year.^“ (History of WikiPedia.com) When the collaborative wikipedia.com format was introduced in January 2001, more than a 1000 articles were created in the first month. The rest is history.

A Real, Online Collaborative Process

With an online application like Google Docs, there is only one document shared by all that is updated in real time so that everyone always sees the same content. It is always possible to go back to an older revision if you don’t like recent changes, but with some basic protocols on how edits and suggestions should be handled then there shouldn’t be too much conflict with different contributors.

Let’s look at the previous example with a more collaborative mindset. This time the manager creates a new Google document and writes the same overview and guidelines right on the document and within Google Docs an email is sent instructing the employee what to do. The employee writes the article on the same Google document and sends another notification email within Google Docs to the manager and everyone else interested. If there are any problems, the manager can directly make the edits and/or make some suggestions on the exact same document. After that, the employee can be emailed again to make a final proofread. When this is completed, a final notification can be sent to the manager and to the webmaster to upload it to the website.

I have heard many people say that when there are only a few people involved in the process, email is still more effective but it really isn’t. It is like having a meeting by leaving voice mail messages. Bear in mind, that this is an very simple example. There are huge productivity games possible when more people are involved, when dealing with off site workers and when clients need to be included in the work process.

In a large scale application like Wikipedia, the shear number of people involved will tend to keep the quality high. In smaller teams, real magic can come when a synergistic team can feed off of each other’s work. I think we can all think back to incredibly productive and invigorating teams we have been on. That energy can be even more focused online.

Online collaboration is not only for the creation of documents and spreadsheets. It is even more vital to collaborate when sharing contacts, calendars and files and in the managing projects and the sales process. This might seem obvious for many younger people who have lived their teenage lives on social media but for the older of us, online collaboration can still be a foreign concept.

Collaboration for Creativity

Collaboration is not only for productivity gains. Sure work processes can become more efficient, but the real value is that bigger and better things can be accomplished. Real collaborative efforts unleash creativity that is difficult to realize with linear processes like emailing back and forth. Companies waste so much time on administrative procedures that add zero value to clients. Online collaborative efforts can greatly reduce the bureaucracy to shift the focus to servicing clients and getting work done.

Check out Edward Boches 10 Rules for Modern Collaboration for some inspiration.

You Won’t Know Until You Try

Try it for yourself, no one understands the real value of collaboration until they do it. Set up a simple Google Document for your next project. You could also try the popular PBworks.com. I personally use Norada’s Solve 360 because it combines customer relation management (CRM) with project management (PM). It is integrated, yet simple to use.

Business Processes

All companies have business processes for everything from ordering business cards to manufacturing products. The problem is that the assumptions and available technologies when the process was started might no longer be valid. Always question everything. “Why are we doing it this way?” “Can’t this be better with a collaborative process?” “Do we even need to do this anymore?”

What is your favorite collaboration tool?

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